Now with broadband!
August 27, 2008
Today we finally got broadband at our dorm room – I feel civilized again! After having used the wireless at SPR Coffee we went and talked to one of the teachers at the dorm that helped us with getting Internet. Then we went across the street to the electrical department of China Mobile and bought a 2mb broadband connection. They arranged for their technician to call me the next day to arrange for when they could come and set it up.
We had dinner at the same little restaurant as the night before, but they really don’t put a lot of meat in their meat dishes, though I think it might be due to the rising prices on food all over the world. The night was spent watching another DVD at our room – I’m now up to 6 DVD’s that are going to get returned due to being of too poor quality.
Today I slept till noon and enjoyed being lazy one last time before school starts again. I headed out to find a guitarshop that I had read about in our local magazine called “More Hangzhou” (same as That’s Beijing for those of you who know that magazine). Think it took me a 45 minute walk from our dorm to the shop in Hangzhou ’s unbearable summer heat, which was really hot today. I found the shop and they sold a half-crappy western guitar for 780 kuai, but as I’m not the greatest guitar player (yet!) it should probably do just fine. So once I get my last paycheck and SU I’ll most likely go buy it, so I can start practicing again.
Walking around the city and reading my map you notice that the Chinese use very poetic names for their roads and all that, but if you say it in Danish it’s just not the same… For eksempel gik jeg ned af en vej I dag, som hedder Yugulu på kinesisk, men på dansk bliver det mere til “Gammeljadevej”. Jeg kunne godt tænke mig at spille matador og eje Gammeljadevej med hotel på!
After the guitar search Josh and I headed home to wait for the Internet technicians (who were half an hour late!) and got Internet set up at our room. It’s 2mb but it’s a bit dodgy, unstable and downloading stuff is a nightmare, but in China you always suspect this kind of hassle – I’ll say it again: Things are NEVER easy in China ! But we’ll probably upgrade it to a 4mb connection soon and see if it changes anything. After that was sorted we headed to computercity to get a router so we can both be online at the same time. I also traded the crap DVD’s to some new ones, but the lady at the shop was NOT happy that I came there complaining and claimed that the DVD’s were fine. Well if they were fine I bloody well wouldn’t be coming to get new ones would I?! Hate Chinese women and their drama…
We went out to eat with Pablo again and tried out a new restaurant that did some very nice shrimp and shuizhuniurou – a dish of very hot soup and beef and also aubergine (eggplant for you yanks), which I’ve been eating almost every night since I got here. The Chinese just do wonders with aubergine and I can’t get enough.
Pablo is moving rooms into a single dorm room and had taken over some old teaching materials that we borrowed so we can practice for the level test on the 10th . Its been almost a year since I last did Chinese language learning, so it’s going to be nice getting started again – hard, but nice.
Tomorrow we’ll be going to register for our other courses. For me it will be getting information on my philosophy class and all that. I really wonder what it will be like.
